English Department Faculty
Robert Lehman
Associate Professor
Robert Lehman
Ph.D.
Contact
Stokes Hall S411
Telephone: 617-552-3736
Email: robert.lehman@bc.edu
Education
- B.A., Oberlin College
- M.A., University of Florida
- Ph.D., Cornell University
Department
Biography
Specializes in British and American modernism, intersections between literature and philosophy,and visual culture. His current project examines the transformation of traditional aestheticcategories鈥攃ategories such as 鈥渂eauty,鈥� 鈥済enius,鈥� and 鈥減leasure鈥濃�攊n the context of literary andvisual modernism.
Professor Lehman is the co-chair of the Dialectical Thinking seminar at the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard.
Publications
Books
- Feeling Seen: Scenes of Recognition in Modernist Literature and Visual Art (near completion).
- Impossible Modernism: T. S. Eliot, Walter Benjamin, and the Critique of Historical Reason (Stanford University Press, 2016).
Edited Collections
- On Judgment (with contributions from Elizabeth Anker, Michael Clune, Todd Cronan, Theo Davis, Simon During, Alex King, Richard Moran, Yi-Ping Ong, and Namwali Serpell). Modern Fiction Studies (Summer 2024).
- Forum on Robert Pippin鈥檚 Philosophy by Other Means: The Arts in Philosophy and Philosophy in the Arts (co-edited with Jess Keiser, with contributions from Robert Chodat, John Hamilton, Espen Hammer, Elisa Magri, and Robert Pippin). Syndicate (Spring 2023).
- Forum on Nathan Brown鈥檚 Rationalist Empiricism: A Theory of Speculative Critique. Syndicate (Fall, 2021).
Articles
- 鈥淭wo Conceptions of Aesthetic Judgment鈥� (under review).
- 鈥淎nxiety and Community.鈥� Modern Fiction Studies 70.2 (2024): 283-293.
- 鈥淎rtworks and Persons.鈥� Philosophy and Literature聽47.1 (2023): 56-66.
- 鈥淐riticism and Judgment.鈥� ELH 87.4 (2020): 1105-1132.
- 鈥淥riginal Nonsense: Joyce, Duchamp, and Modernism鈥檚 Genius.鈥� Modernism/Modernity 27.2 (2020): 339-360.
- 鈥淣ovelty, Non-Conceptuality, and Aesthetic Experience.鈥� diacritics (forthcoming).
- 鈥淏ack to the Future: Late Modernism in J. G. Ballard鈥檚 The Drowned World.鈥� Journal of Modern Literature 41.4 (2018, forthcoming).
- 鈥淟ingering: Pleasure, Desire, and Life in Kant鈥檚 Critique of Judgment.鈥� Journal of Speculative Philosophy 32.2 (2018): 217-242.
- 鈥淔ormalism, Mere Form, and Judgment.鈥� New Literary History 48.2 (Spring 2017): 245-263.
- 鈥淏eautiful Things: Bruce Nauman鈥檚 Carousel.鈥� Postmodern Culture 26.3 (May 2016): n.p.
- 鈥淟etters for the Blind.鈥� SubStance: A Review of Theory and Literary Criticism 45.1 (Spring 2016): 81-97.
- 鈥淎bstract Pleasures: Romanticism and Finitism in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens.鈥� Modern Philology 111.2 (November 2013): 308-328.
- 鈥淭he Persistence of the Aesthetic.鈥� Frakcija: Performing Arts Magazine 68-69 (2013): 76-83.
- 鈥淏etween the Science of the Sensible and the Philosophy of Art: Finitude in Alain Badiou鈥檚 Inaesthetics.鈥� Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 15.2 (Summer 2010): 171-185.
- 鈥淔inite States: Toward a Kantian Theory of the Event.鈥� diacritics 39.1 (Spring 2009): 61-74.
- 鈥淓liot鈥檚 Last Laugh: The Dissolution of Satire in The Waste Land.鈥� Journal of Modern Literature 32.2 (Winter 2009): 65-79.
- 聽鈥淎llegories of Rending: Killing Time with Walter Benjamin.鈥� New Literary History 39.2 (Spring 2008): 233-250.
Book Reviews, Introductions, and Responses
- Review of Jensen Suther, True Materialism: Hegelian Marxism and the Modernist Struggle for Freedom (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2025). Modernism/modernity 32.3 (Fall 2025): 593-595.
- Introduction to On Judgment. Modern Fiction Studies 70.2 (2024): 207-213.
- Introduction (with Jess Keiser) to forum on Robert Pippin鈥檚 Philosophy by Other Means: The Arts in Philosophy and Philosophy in the Arts. Syndicate (Spring 2023): n.p.
- Introduction to forum on Nathan Brown鈥檚 Rationalist Empiricism: A Theory of Speculative Critique. Syndicate (Fall 2021): n.p.
- 鈥淎ttachment to What?鈥� Response to Rita Felski鈥檚 Hooked: Art and Attachment. nonsite.org (Spring 2021): n.p.
- 鈥淎esthetic Unconsolation.鈥� Response to Paul North鈥檚 The Yield: Kafka鈥檚 Atheological Reformation (with a reply by the author). Syndicate (Winter 2021): n.p.
- Review of Giorgio Agamben, Taste, trans. Cooper Francis (New York: Seagull Books, 2017). Critical Inquiry (2019): 812-813.
- Review of Eli Friedlander, Expressions of Judgment: An Essay on Kant鈥檚 Aesthetics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015). Critical Inquiry 42.1 (2015): 221-223.
- 鈥淏eauty That Must Die.鈥� Review of Martin H盲gglund, Dying for Time: Proust, Woolf, Nabokov (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012). Theory & Event 16.1 (2013): n.p.
- Review of Lecia Rosenthal, Mourning Modernism: Literature, Catastrophe, and the Politics of Consolation (New York: Fordham University Press, 2011). Modernist Cultures 7.1 (May 2012): 139-144.
- 鈥淚nfinite Conversation.鈥� Review of Peter E. Gordon, Continental Divide: Heidegger, Cassirer, Davos (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010). Criticism: A Quarterly for Literature and the Arts. 53.1 (Winter 2011): 152-157.
- 鈥淭oward a Speculative Realism.鈥� Review of Quentin Meillassoux, Apr猫s la finitude: Essai sur la n茅cessit茅 de la contingence. (Paris: 脡ditions du Seuil, 2006). Theory & Event 11.1 (2008): n.p.
Other Publications
- 聽鈥淓ntwining Literature and History.鈥� Stanford University Press Blog (2016).